Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born in Eastern Nigeria in 1930. He was the fifth of six children and raised in a family who converted to Christianity. As he grew older, he rejected the Christian name he was given and went back to his native name. He attended and graduated from a university in Nigeria.
Disgruntled with works depicting Africans, such as those written by Joseph Conrad (and to which I will agree a dislike for), he penned his first novel and found success. Things Fall Apart was published in 1959. Although his target audience are his fellow Africans, it has been loved by people all over the world and has been translated into over forty different languages.
Chinua Achebe has written books, short stories, poetry and articles. He has been an educator as well as being politically involved. Due to a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, he returned to the United States (previously was here to teach at a University) to again teach and receive greater medical care.
Although Nigerian and under some scrutiny, he writes his African novels in English and declares the use of English as a way to allow varying language backgrounds to unify under one language, similar to the way the Euro has allowed a unified currency in European countries.